▶ Your Answer : The
lecturer takes issue with the reading passage’s claim that decrease of the sea
otter is due to the environmental pollution, by arguing that reasons of reading
passage are unconvincing.
First of all, reading passages contends that
increased level of chemicals leads to infection of otters, ultimately resulting
in decreased number of otters. The lecturer, however, contradicts this purport,
indicating that dead otter are rarely observed. If environment pollution was main
reason, many dead otters would be found. Moreover, this fact supports
predator hypothesis: Otters are eaten up by predators, therefore dead
otters are hardly shown.
Second, it is true that orca preys on the
larger mammals such as whales, however, the number of whale is declining because of people
hunting them. So, orcas have to change their diet for surviving. The fact that
other sea mammals are also declining supports predator hypothesis either. Orcas
eat smaller mammals to survive.
Lastly, uneven pattern of otter decline can be
better explained by predator hypothesis. Where the orcas are easy to access
shows decline of the otters to a large extent, while the places where the orcas
are hard to access shows stable number of otters.
For these reasons, the lecturer believes the
predator hypothesis explains the change of the number of otters better than the
pollution hypothesis, contradicting reading’s purport. |